
Glass_ J 5" I ^ 
Book 'AA-2-. 



German Land Hunger 

And Other Underlying 
Causes of the War 



By 



Munroe Smith 

Professor of Jurisprudence, Columbia University 
Doctor of Laws, Amherst, Columbia, 
Gbttingen, and Louvain 



^^ 



Reprinted from '^Militarism and Statecraft 



Copyright, 1918 

BY 

MUNROE SMITH 



By Trfinwf^T* 

MAY 6 1919 



Zbe 1kntct<erboclier pvesi, flevp ^orh 






GERMAN LAND HUNGER 

AND OTHER UNDERLYING CAUSES OF THE WAR 

Toward the end of the nineteenth century and 
in the early years of the twentieth, a few European 
and American writers began to note the devel- 
opment in Germany of disquieting tendencies. 
A literature demanding the expansion of German 
influence and power, and hinting or stating that 
this expansion could be obtained only through war, 
was growing in bulk and was gaining wide circu- 
lation. German military force was being per- 
fected with a concentration of national effort 
unexampled in history, and a powerful navy was 
building. In spite of these and other warnings, 
the world refused to be alarmed. In Europe, 
where alarm had been endemic for half a century 
and had quite inevitably taken on the milder 
form of chronic anxiety, there seemed to be no 
increase of apprehension. 

Since the outbreak of the World War the early 

alarmists have come into their own. The ground 

203 



204 Militarism and Statecraft 

they broke has been subjected to intensive cultiva- 
tion. The recent history of Germany has been 
minutely studied and the German literature of 
the last generation has been ransacked in the 
effort to discover and formulate the underlying 
causes of the cataclysm. Today we are beginning 
to make tentative syntheses. 



During the greater part ©f the nineteenth cen- 
tury, and particularly from the War of Liberation 
to the Franco-German War, German political 
sentiment was strongly Liberal. There were few 
republicans, but there were also relatively few 
supporters of absolute monarchic power. The 
dominant ideal was popular government under 
written constitutions restricting princely authority. 
Above all things the Germans desired national 
unity; but they desired liberty as well, and they 
expected to gain unity through liberty. The Re- 
volution of 1848 gave them an opportunity to carry 
out this programme. The failure of the Frank- 
fort Parliament to give Germany either liberty or 
unity discredited popular government. Between 
the years 1864 and 1871 Bismarck unified Ger- 
many and gave to the German people, not popular 



German Land Hunger 205 

government indeed, but at least representative 
institutions. This he accomplished, in spite of 
the strenuous opposition of the Prussian Diet 
from 1862 to 1866, through the Prussian monarchy 
and the Prussian army. The result of this double 
experience — the failure of 1848, the triumphs of 
1866 and of 1 87 1 — was to establish a conviction 
that democratic government is hopelessly inefhcient 
and to enhance the prestige of the Hohenzollern 
dynasty and of the army. A very large portion 
of the old Liberal party abandoned its traditions ; 
and in the generation that grew up during and 
after the establishment of the German Empire 
there were practically no Liberals of the old school, 
and few Radicals except the Social Democrats. 
That Germany was reverting, since 1870, to the 
monarchic ideal of government, while the rest of 
Europe continued to move towards democracy, 
was one of the things that tended to isolate the 
new Empire from the prevailing currents of Euro- 
pean thought and feeling. In particular, the 
influence of France, which had been very great 
in Germany since the Thirty Years' War, was 
sensibly lessened. The German attitude towards 
France was, after 1870, on the whole, one of con- 
tempt; although the rapidity with which France 
rallied from the shock of defeat and the growing 



2o6 Militarism and Statecraft 

stability of the French RepubHc aroused, espe- 
cially in P.'^ussian military circles, a degree of 
apprehension. 

Before 1870 there was little of the spirit of 
militarism in Germany, outside of Prussia, nor 
was the Prussian people as a whole animated by 
this spirit. Few Germans even dreamed of 
military conquests or of world empire. 

Soon after 1870, however, the consciousness of 
military power and the rapid development of 
German manufactures and foreign trade began 
to create new ambitions. Because their chief 
commercial competitor, Great Britain, had de- 
pendencies all over the world, the Germans ascribed 
a probably exaggerated importance to the posses- 
sion of colonies. By manufacturers and mer- 
chants, colonies were desired, at first, chiefly as 
trading posts, which were to facilitate the opening 
and exploitation of wider markets. This desire 
was met, to some extent, by the colonial policy 
inaugurated by Bismarck in 1884-85. Soon, 
however, there arose a demand for colonies of a 
different type, colonies of exploitation, from which 
Germany could obtain the tropical products it 
needed either for home consumption or for its 
manufacturing industries. Simultaneously there 
appeared a demand for colonies of settlement, 



German Land Hunger 207 

in which Germany's surplus population could 
find new homes under the new imperial flag. In 
so far as such colonies were to be established 
across the seas, the aspirations of German expan- 
sionists were largely sentimental. With the de- 
velopment of German manufacturing industries 
and the growing demand for labour at home, 
German emigration, formerly so great in volume, 
shrank to negligible proportions. There was, 
however, increasing indignation over the millions 
of Germans "lost" in the nineteenth century; 
and the fact that the Germans who were leav- 
ing the Fatherland to better themselves could 
not be induced to settle in the colonies that 
Germany already possessed kept this indignation 
alive. 

More dangerous to the peace of the world than 
these aspirations was the growing demand for 
colonies of settlement in Europe. Those Germans 
who watched with increasing alarm the objection- 
able features of modern industrialism — the trans- 
fer of population from country to city, the 
growth of luxury and the increase of want, the 
physical deterioration of the labouring classes, 
the moral deterioration of the very rich and the 
very poor, the decreasing birth rate — these 
demanded colonization to preserve the balance 



2o8 Militarism and Statecraft 

between the industrial and the agricultural popu- 
lation. They believed that with the acquisition 
of territory adapted to agricultural settlement 
the declining German birth rate would rise again, 
and that the position of the German people in 
Europe and in the world would be secured and 
improved by the renewed natural increase of its 
population. Efforts to develop "home coloniza- 
tion" — for example, by the wholesale expropriation 
of the Prussian Poles — were unsuccessful. Home 
colonization on any large scale obviously demanded 
an extension of the boundaries of the German 
Empire by the conquest of neighbouring territo- 
ries. To cite one of many utterances : 

To live, to lead a healthy and happy life, we need 
great tracts of new arable land. With these, im- 
perialism can and must provide us. . . . Of what 
use to us is Germanism in Brazil or in South Africa, 
however successfully it may develop? It will 
greatly help the expansion of the German race; 
it will do little for the power of the German Empire. 
On the other hand, increase of German continental 
territory and of the number of German peasants 
. . . will form a protective barrier against the flood 
of our enemies and will give a firm foundation to 
our growing power. ^ 

* Albrecht Wirth, Volkstum und Weltmacht in der Geschichte 
(1906), p. 235. 



German Land Hunger 209 

By the same 

simple plan, 
That they should take who have the power 
And they should keep who can, ' 

colonies of settlement and colonies of exploita- 
tion, to say nothing of more and better trading 
posts, might be acquired in other parts of the world. 
These were the sinister impHcations of the demand 
for "a place in the sun."^ 

In the German mind there gradually developed 
a vision of a German world empire, based on an 
expanded Fatherland with a rapidly increasing 
population, dominating a confederation of states 
that was to extend from Scandinavia to Asia 
Minor, holding over-sea possessions of all sorts in 
eastern Asia, in Africa, in Latin America and in the 
islands of all the oceans. There appeared a singu- 
lar and characteristically German theory that the 
estabhshment of such an empire would redress a 
historical wrong and would therefore be a triumph 
of distributive justice. ' ' In the division of the non- 
European world among the European powers," said 
Treitschke, ''Germany has always hitherto failed 
to get its share." 3 Similarly Professor Dove: 

^ Wordsworth, " Rob Roy's Grave. 
^ William II, speech of June i8, 1901. 
3 Politik, vol. i., p. 42. 
14 



2IO Militarism and Statecraft 

A nation that has won for itself through its own 
efficiency so important a place in commerce and 
industry as the Germans have secured cannot 
possibly stand aside, as it used to do, while other 
nations, by nature much less industrious, try to 
secure for themselves in the coming redivision of 
Africa the lion's share. We mean at last to get 
what belongs to us, because we need it, because we 
cannot do without it. . . .^ 

The new land hunger clothed its nakedness 
with broader and more specious theories. To 
justify expansion through war, a philosophical 
doctrine was developed. The theory of the 
struggle for existence and the survival of the 
fittest was applied to the competition of nations. 
German thinkers did not ignore the fact that in 
human society conscious co-operation had in- 
troduced a new factor, but they restricted its 
function to the single group, and they refused to 
recognize that civilization had developed any group 
worthy of consideration except the national state. 
Among national states, the law of survival through 
struggle maintained unmitigated sway. 

This Neo-Darwinism appealed strongly to the 
Germans, because of their growing conviction 
that they were, in all important characteristics, 

* "Die grossen Wirtschaftsgebiete Afrikas," in Weltwirtschaft , 
vol. v., no. 8 (November, 1915), p. 162. 



German Land Hunger 211 

superior to all other nations. Because they were 
fittest to survive, they were destined to survive; 
and the fiercer the struggle, the more rapid must 
be their triumph. Throughout the nineteenth 
century German historians had been re-writing, 
and German philosophers had been re-interpreting, 
the history of Germany, of Europe, and of the 
world on the basis of an assumed superiority of 
the Germans. ' They ended by convincing them- 
selves and their countrymen that this superiority 
was an established and indisputable fact. The 
contributions of the Mediterranean and parti- 
cularly those of the Latin peoples to the civiliza- 
tion of the world, alike in ancient and in modern 
times, were minimized; and in so far as they were 
conceded, they were attributed to infiltrations of 
Teutonic blood and genius. This national self- 
glorification, relatively modest in its beginnings 
and, until 1870, little more pronounced than the 
self-esteem not infrequently manifested by other 
nations, was subsequently carried beyond sane 
limits. German victories in war, German achieve- 
ments in civil administration and in social organi. 

* To the Swiss professor, Antoine Guilland, we are indebted 
for an early and penetrating study of the tendency of German 
historiography in the nineteenth century: L'Allemagne nouvelle 
el ses historiens: Niebuhr, Ranke, Mommserif Sybel, Treitschke 
(1899). 



212 Militarism and Statecraft * 

zation, German progress in the application of 
science to industry and the rapid expansion of 
German commerce — all these heightened German 
national pride to the point of megalomania. 

''Megalomania" is the term used by more than 
one German to describe the Pan-Germanist state 
of mind. In a pamphlet published in 191 5, 
Miiller-Holm writes : 

What has caused us to be completely detested 
by civilized nations is the insufferable attitude of 
the Pan-Germanists. " Pan-Germanists " is their 
name in politics; in science they are called *'Race 
Theorists." Do you wish to know what "Race 
Theory" is? It is a so-called science, of which the 
purpose is to prove that the Germans stand first 
among all nations of the world, that all the achieve- 
ments of civilization since the beginning of history 
have proceeded from them, and that the rule of the 
world fitly and rightly belongs to them. . . . What 
an impression of Germany's politicians, of the aims 
of German patriots, must a foreigner derive from 
these products of national megalomania? One 
writer expects a "Pan-Germanic Empire," em- 
bracing "the present Empire; the other Teutonic 
territories in Europe, including Scandinavia and 
the Netherlands, as equal partners in the Empire; 
further, the territories of the Latins in the West and 
in the Southwest and of Austria's western and 
southern Slavs, as dependent colonial territories, 
besides all America south of the Amazon." An- 
other writer calmly launches the assertion that the 



German Land Hunger 213 

cultural value of a nation depends on its percentage 
of * ' the blond race ' ' ; and on this basis he undertakes 
to prove, in each individual case, that all the great 
men of the non-Teutonic nations were of Teutonic 
blood. . . . The views of these dangerous fanatics 
quite dominate public opinion.^ 

The writer to whom Miiller-Holm refers, at the 
close of the passage cited above, is probably 
Ludwig Woltmann, who asserts that Alexander 
the Great and Julius C^sar were of the Teutonic 
type, and conjectures that Napoleon was a de- 
scendant of the Vandals. Woltmann also iden- 
tifies Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Montaigne, 
Voltaire, and other illustrious Italians and French- 
men, as Teutons of the full blood. He tells us 
that Shakespeare and Raphael were Teutons of 
the half blood, and that they were geniuses, not 
because of, but in spite of the non-Teutonic blood 
in their veins. His interpretation of history is 
even more extraordinary than his ethnology; 
witness the following statements: 

The entire European civilization, even in Slav 
and Latin countries, is the work of the Teutonic 
race. . . . The Papacy, the Renaissance, the 
French Revolution, and the Napoleonic Empire 
were achievements of the Teutonic spirit. . . . 

^ Der englische Gedanke i?i Deutschland: Zur Abwehr des Im 
perialismus (Munich, 19 15), pp. 132-134. 



214 Militarism and Statecraft 

Papacy and Empire are both Teutonic organiza- 
tions for domination, meant to subjugate the world. 
The Teutonic race is called to circle the earth with 
its rule, to exploit the treasiires of nature and of 
human labour power, and to make the passive races 
servient elements in its cultural development. ^ 

German Neo-Darwinism found an ethical basis 
in the assumption that the civilization of the 
world had been developed in the past and was to 
be perfected in the future through the interna- 
tional struggle for power and the survival of the 
nations best qualified for dominion. German 
supremacy would benefit the whole world. Neo- 
Darwinism found also a religious basis in the 
assumption that the struggle for existence and 
for power was the method of progress ordained by 
God. One of the popularizers of Pan-Germanism 
found the assertion of this great truth in the words 
of Christ: "Many are called, but few are chosen" 
— words, he told his countrymen, ''whose pro- 
found wisdom Darwin has enabled us to grasp." ^ 
German megalomania had already expressed it- 
self in religious phrases: in the claim that the 
Germans were "the chosen people" and "the 
salt of the earth. "^ 

^ Politische Anthropologie (1903), pp. 255, 290-298. 
=* Klaus Wagner, Krieg, pp. 145-146. 
3 William II, speech of March 22, 1905. 



German Land Hunger 215 

It is perhaps the most ominous symptom of mod- 
ern German megalomania that the Germans have 
desired and have striven to develop a civilization 
that shall be peculiarly their own, genuinely 
German. Until the nineteenth century all edu- 
cated Germans realized that their civilization, like 
all modern European civiHzation, was a con- 
tinuation of the ancient Mediterranean civiliza- 
tion; that we moderns had drawn, as Maine 
says, our religion from Judaea, our art and letters 
and philosophy from Greece, our politics and law 
from Rome . Goethe simply voiced this recognition 
when he said: 

We Germans are of yesterday. For a century 
we have indeed made earnest efforts to cultivate 
ourselves; but a couple of centuries may well pass 
before so much spirituality {Geist) and higher 
culture make their way and become general among 
our countrymen . . . that it will be possible to 
say of them: **It was long ago that they were 
barbarians."* 

To Goethe, culture was identical with European 
civilization. Today, Kultur means something 
quite different. Modern German philosophers 
have attempted to explain the difference; they 
agree on one point only, that German culture 

» Gesprache (Biedermann ed.), vol. vi., p. 125. 



2i6 Militarism and Statecraft . 

is something genuinely German {echt deutsch). 
In the German social life, however, there has 
never been anything echt deutsch save what was 
there from the start, what was ur deutsch. In 
Germany, as in Scandinavia, in England and in 
North France, every element in the social life 
that is not barbaric, every idea and every institu- 
tion that has lifted the people out of barbarism, 
is of foreign origin. To Germanize civilization 
in Germany, to weed out everything exotic and 
to cultivate only the indigenous growths, neces- 
sarily means a reversion toward barbarism. 
Such reversions have in fact occurred. Some of 
them leave other nations unconcerned. If the 
Germans like their genuinely German architec- 
ture and sculpture, the fact that other people 
find these products barbarous is immaterial. 
The European attitude was indicated, during 
this war, by the French artist who protested 
against a demand that Berlin should be treated 
as the Germans had treated Rheims. ''No re- 
venge," he said, "could be more adequate than 
to leave Berlin as it is." Of more serious concern 
are the German reversions in politics, in ethics 
and in religion; for these menace the security 
of the world. In politics the Germans will have 
neither Roman liberty nor Roman imperium, nor 



German Land Hunger 217 

the blend of the two that has been worked out 
in England. Parliamentary government is not 
even genuinely Teutonic {echt germanisch) , for it 
started, not in England, but in Spain. Accord- 
ingly, the Germans have retained and fortified 
the Teutonic type of monarchy, which rests on 
barbaric allegiance to a war lord. Nietzsche, 
who in other respects admires the Latin civiliza- 
tion and would retain it, quarrels with Christian 
ethics and constructs a German system; but his 
superman is morally the cave man, made more 
dangerous by his mental acquisitions. In reli- 
gion they have reverted to the "old God" whom 
the elder Moltke worshipped and whom William 
II invokes — a God who has the lineaments of the 
tribal Jahveh but swings the hammer of Thor. 

Of all the recent German reversions towards 
barbarism, that which has most astounded the 
civilized world is the attitude of many if not 
most German writers towards war. To them war 
is not an evil, necessary perhaps, but still an evil ; 
it is a thing good in itself. To this attitude, 
however, they were inevitably urged by all the 
forces of feeling and of thought we have examined. 
National ambition was born of recent successful 
wars. Confidence in victory was based on the 
traditional valour of the Teutons; on their re- 



2i8 Militarism and Statecraft 

corded triumphs since the time when their sav- 
age ancestors first forced their way over the Alps 
and across the Rhine to a place in the sun; 
on the thorough organization and training of 
their great modern armies, and on the skill and 
patience with which modern German students 
of war, the elite of the nation, had adapted all 
the acquests of science to the ends of slaughter. 
To ambition and confidence add a conviction that 
war is the test of a nation's right to survive, and 
that the progress of the world is achieved through 
the survival of the fittest nations; add also a 
belief that victory in war is not only a just biolo- 
gical and sociological verdict, but also a judgment 
of God in favour of his chosen people — surely 
there was here a combination of sentiments and 
ideas suited to penetrate the national mind along 
every line of approach and to shape the national 
soul from the top to the bottom of the social 
structure. That is why the praises of war were 
sung by German writers of all sorts and conditions, 
not only by military writers, but also by histo- 
rians and publicists, savants and philosophers, 
poets and ministers of religion. 

Given this national attitude toward war, there 
is an especially direct threat to the peace and 
order of the world in the expression which German 



German Land Hunger 219 

Neo- Darwinism (with its refusal to recognize 
the world, even the civilized world, as a society 
in which co-operation has to any degree displaced 
or can advantageously displace survival through 
struggle) has found in legal theory. The dogma 
of the unlimited and irresponsible sovereignty of 
the state is accentuated. This dogma is no pro- 
duct of German or of modern thought. It comes 
down from the Roman Empire, which included 
the whole civilized world. The development and 
co-existence of a number of civilized states has 
obviously destroyed the original basis of the 
dogma. Modern states are necessarily members 
of a society of nations, and no single state can 
claim, much less exercise, irresponsible power. In 
Germany, however, and also in other parts of the 
world, absolute sovereignty is still attributed to 
the several states, or at least to those states that 
can be regarded as "powers." It is of course a 
corollary of this dogma that international rules 
and customs bind the single state in so far only 
as it accepts them, and so long only as its peculiar 
interests do not require their abandonment. It 
is a further corollary that every treaty is concluded 
with the tacit reservation, rehus sic stantibus. 
Other than German writers have asserted this 
doctrine; but few writers outside of Germany 



220 Militarism and Statecraft 

have pushed it to the same extreme. In Germany 
it seems to mean that treaty engagements are to 
be observed only so long as the conditions that 
originally made the treaty advantageous continue 
to exist, and that, so soon as a government sees 
more profit than risk in repudiating its engage- 
ments, it is bound, as the trustee of the interests 
of the nation, to rescind or to break the treaty. 
When Bethmann-HoUweg characterized a treaty, 
signed by the accredited representatives of five 
European powers, as *'a scrap of paper," he faith- 
fully reproduced the view professed by the 
majority of German publicists. Here, again, 
we have a reversion, and one that goes back 
all the way to barbarism; for without the 
sanctity of plighted faith there is neither law 
nor civilization. 

Unless, after this war, the Germans are willing 
to reconnect themselves with the historical Euro- 
pean culture, more than Goethe's two centuries 
may pass before their neighbours will be able 
to say: "It was long ago that they were 
barbarians." 

To these German confessions, or rather boasts, 
of greed and unscrupulousness, foreign statesmen, 
as President Wilson has said, paid little atten- 
tion. They "regarded what German professors 



German Land Hunger 221 

expounded in their class-rooms and German writ- 
ers set forth to the world ... as the dream of 
minds detached from practical affairs, as preposter- 
ous private conceptions of German destiny."^ 
Still less attention was paid to this German pro- 
paganda by the foreign press. The man in 
the street never suspects, and the student of 
history does not always realize, how much explo- 
sive force may slumber within the shell of a theory. 
Suspicion that might have been aroused by the 
concrete ambitions displayed in the more recent 
Pan-Germanist literature was largely disarmed 
by the very frankness of their avowal. Men 
who were injudicious enough to say such things 
need not be taken seriously. It was in fact only 
the less authoritative expounders of Pan-German- 
ism who dotted all their i's and crossed all their 
t's; the more responsible leaders discussed peace- 
ful penetration, commercial treaties, customs 
unions, and other methods of expanding German 
influence without war. The aggressive militant 
tone taken by such writers as Botticher (alias 
Paul de Lagarde), Bley, Lange, Wirth, Tannen- 
berg, and Frymann seemed to put them in a small 
class by themselves. As for Klaus Wagner, if he 
were not mad, like Nietzsche, he must be purposely 
» Flag-Day Address, June 14, 19 17. 



222 Militarism and Statecraft 

peppering Pan-Germanism in order to make it 
more marketable. 

Foreign scholars — and few but scholars took 
the pains to follow this militarist and annexa- 
tionist literature — forgot that popularizers do 
more than ' ' solid " writers to mould opinion. And 
those who knew, or were told by German friends, 
that at the beer tables German civilians were an- 
nexing little neighbours and dividing great empires, 
and who found the fact amusing, forgot that in 
Germany the Biertischpolitiker does at least as 
much as the press itself to consolidate sentiment. 

To President Wilson's statement, that little 
attention was paid by foreign statesmen to the 
Pan-Germanist agitation, one exception must 
be made. In France this movement undoubtedly 
increased the anxiety, not only of statesmen, but 
also of the entire nation. In France the memories 
of 1870 had not grown dim. In France appre- 
hension was kept alive by recurrent crises and notes 
of warning in the German press. Frenchmen were 
well aware that it was a fixed idea in German 
army circles that Germany would never be ''safe" 
— safe to pursue her aims of domination — until 
France should be crushed. Of France, through 
all these years, it might be said, as Keats said of 
his Titan goddess: 



German Land Hunger 223 

There was a listening fear in her regard, 
As if the vanward clouds of evil days 
Had spent their malice, and the sullen rear 
Was with its stored thunder labouring up. 



II 



For the study of the annexation movement in 
Germany since the outbreak of the World War, 
a Swiss scholar, S. Grumbach, has given us a 
valuable mass of material. ' He has been able to 
use, not only such books, pamphlets, and articles 
as were published in Germany from August, 19 14, 
to the end of May, 1916, but also many petitions, 
tracts, and circulars, printed, mimeographed, or 
typewritten, that were not published but were 
privately distributed; and not only such matter 
as was circulated without governmental inter- 
ference, but also some important documents of 
which the reproduction and the circulation were 
restricted or wholly forbidden. 

Of the industry and conscientious care with 
vrhich this book has been compiled and edited it 
would be difficult to speak too highly. The most 

' S. Grumbach, Das annexionistische Deutschland: Eine Samm- 
lung von Dokumenten die seit dem 4 August, igi4, in Deutschland 
offentlich oder gelieim verbreitet wurden; mit einem Anhang: Anti- 
annexionistische Kundgehungen. Payot & Co., Lausanne, 191 7; 
X, 471 pp. 



224 Militarism and Statecraft 

important documents are printed entire. In 
dealing with books, pamphlets, and articles, 
Grumbach is of course compelled to confine him- 
self to extracts; but there is no evidence that he 
has unfairly wrested passages from their context. 
There is, indeed, evidence to the contrary; for 
many of the utterances he cites would be much 
more startling had he omitted the qualifications 
that accompany them. Nor does he present 
demands only without the arguments by which 
they are supported. He does not confine his 
book to annexationist literature; he has collected 
and presented, in a "second part" which forms 
nearly one-fifth of his book, such protests as he 
has been able to discover. 

How widely annexation sentiment was diffused 
in Germany before the war is shown by the rapidity 
with which demands for annexation were formu- 
lated by all sorts and conditions of Germans in 
the very first months of the great conflict. Of the 
annexationist books and pamphlets from which 
Grumbach draws longer or shorter extracts, twenty- 
three were published in the first five months of 
the war, thirty-six in the year 191 5, thirteen in the 
first five months of 1 916. Of the publications 
dated 191 5, some may have appeared and more 
must have been written in 19 14. These data, 



German Land Hunger 225 

so far as they go, militate strongly against the 
theory that annexation sentiment was created by 
the war, or that it became general only when 
the duration of the war begot the feeling that 
Germany must have something to show for her 
expenditure of blood and treasure. 

Still stronger evidence of the wide diffusion of 
annexation sentiment is afforded by the attitude 
taken by the various German political parties. 
Before the end of 1914 single leaders of the Na- 
tional Liberal and Progressive parties — parties 
representing particularly the middle classes — 
had openly advocated annexations.' In the 
course of the following year all German parties 
except the Social Democrats committed them- 
selves fully to this programme.'' The Social De- 
mocratic party steadily repudiated annexations^; 
but several of its leaders construed this declaration 
as a repudiation of "conquests" only, and not as 
excluding such "rectifications of frontiers" in 
the East and in the West as might be necessary 
for the protection of the Fatherland. This sacri- 
fice of their internationalist principles was largely 
forced upon them by their constituents. In the 
autumn of 191 4, the Courier, the official organ 

* Grumbach, pp. 71, 104. ^ Ihid.^ pp. 33-40. 

3 Ibid., pp. 429 et se^. 
IS 



226 Militarism and Statecraft • 

of the German Union of Transportation Workers, 
which had an enrollment of 100,000 members, 
expressed the hope that the German flag would 
wave forever over Antwerp; and Paul Lensch, 
at one time chief editor of the Leipziger Volks- 
zeitung, later on the staff of the Hamburger Echo 
(both Social Democratic), asserted that the right 
of populations to determine their own destiny 
must be thrown upon the scrap-heap, and that 
Bismarck showed himself an ass when he 
neglected to annex Belfort. In June, 1915, the 
Frankfurter Volksstimme declared that the Social 
Democratic party must have a positive programme, 
and that this must include changes in the map of 
Europe. In April, 191 6, the same journal gave 
its support to the demand for German colonies 
of settlement in eastern Europe. "It is no char- 
acteristic of socialism," the editor declared, 
"to place itself in conflict with new develop- 
ments." In August, 1 91 5, the Harburger Volks- 
blatt expressed regret that the Social Democratic 
party had again committed itself to the formula 
of "no annexations." The staunch Marxist, 
Kolb of Karlsruhe, and Meerfeld, chief editor of 
the Kolnische Volkszeitung, pronounced this for- 
mula un- Marxian. Several Social Democratic 
members of the Imperial Diet fell promptly into 



German Land Hunger 227 

line. Peuss-Dessau pleaded (January 2, 1915) 
for the annexation of Belgium, in the interest of 
the Belgians themselves. Landsberg advocated 
expansion in the East to the line of the Naref, 
which meant the taking of territory with nearly 
5,000,000 Slav inhabitants. Oskar Geek, and 
also the Baden deputies Adelung and Marum, 
expressed views identical with those of Kolb and 
Meerfeld.' Finally, the president of this party, 
Philipp Scheidemann, speaking in the Imperial 
Diet, April 6, 1916, launched the winged word: 

One must be a political infant to persuade him- 
self that a whole continent can be set on fire, that 
millions of men can be killed or wounded, without 
the removal of a single frontier stone placed by 
some musty old diplomatist. "^ 

The only poHtical group that has opposed an- 
nexations consistently, and without quahfications 
or reservations, is the minority fraction of Social 
Democrats, led, until his imprisonment, by Karl 
Liebnecht, and since that time by Hugo Haase. 

It must of course be admitted that the war in- 
tensified annexation sentiment. If it did nothing 
else, it furnished new arguments for annexations. 
The German people, as we know, accepted, in the 
teeth of all evidence to the contrary, the official 

» Grumbach, pp. vi., vii., 111-119. "" Ihid., pp. 114-115- 



228 Militarism and Statecraft • 

statements that the war was planned by Great 
Britain and begun by Russia. Of those more 
intelligent persons who saw that Germany had 
in fact begun the war, the majority held that if 
Germany had not forestalled her enemies they 
would soon have attacked her, and that it was the 
right and the duty of German statecraft to an- 
ticipate the impending attack and to wage the 
inevitable war at a moment when the European 
situation seemed favourable. Professor Schiemann 
wrote in 191 5: 

Bernhardi's brave books pointed out, in correct 
anticipation of events, the necessity of grasping 
the sword before the conspiracy that menaced 
Germany came to the point of action.^ 

And later in the same year General Baron von 
Gebsattel explained: 

We desired this war . . . because we were con- 
scious that the more resolutely and promptly a 
people which in any event is to be forced to fight 
for its existence chooses a favourable moment for 
drawing the sword, the more easily will the war 
be conducted and the lighter will be the sacrifices.^ 

Each of these theories, that of defence and that 
of anticipation, assumed that Germany was a 

^ Ein Verleumder: Glossen zur Vorgeschichte des Weltkrieges, p. 6, 
'"Das Gebot der Stunde," in Der Panther ^ no. 10 (October, 
1915), PP- 1178-1179. 



German Land Hunger 229 

peaceful nation surrounded by quarrelsome neigh- 
bours. Holding this view, it was possible for 
Germans to insist, with a good conscience, that 
these dangerous neighbours must in future be 
restrained. Germany must at least obtain such 
strategic frontiers as to give her ampler protection 
against future assaults; and it would be much 
safer so to cripple her chief enemies that any 
future attack on their part would be hopeless. 
This point of view gave annexation sentiment 
not only a valuable argument but also, what 
was worth even more, a synonym for annexation 
which was less crude and which implied justifi- 
cation — ''guaranties and securities." The Social 
Democrats, as we have seen, repudiated annexa- 
tions, but the majority fraction did not reject 
territorial guaranties and securities. 

The belief that Germany was a peaceful country, 
which either was or soon would have been assailed, 
also served to justify the demand that her enemies 
be punished. In addition to ceding frontier dis- 
tricts, they must pay the full cost of the war. As 
the war went on and the costs mounted, and as it 
became clear that no European country would be 
able to pay an adequate money indemnity, a new 
argument for annexation appeared, succinctly 
expressed in the phrase " indemnity in land." 



230 Militarism and Statecraft 

Not less important was the appeal to patriotic 
sentiment that appears in every war. The Ger- 
man flag was not to be hauled down where it had 
once waved; the graves of German heroes were 
not to be left in the hands of their enemies. To 
this latter sentiment the National Liberal leader, 
Bassermann, gave an economic expression which 
perhaps made a special appeal to the German 
Michael: "We shall know how to hold firmly for 
all time the lands that have been manured {gediingt) 
with German blood."' 

Of the annexationist declarations that appeared 
in Germany during the war, the most significant 
are two memorials addressed to Chancellor von 
Bethmann-Hollweg. One of these, dated May 
20, 191 5, was presented on behalf of six of the 
most important industrial and agricultural asso- 
ciations of Germany and was signed by their 
ofBcial heads. The other memorial was adopted 
at a meeting held in Berlin, June 20, 191 5, and 
was signed by 352 professors, 158 schoolteachers 
and clergymen, 145 superior administrative offi- 
cials, mayors and members of city councils, 148 
judges and advocates, 40 members of the Imperial 
Diet and of state legislatures, 18 retired admirals 
and generals, 182 manufacturers, merchants, and 

* Grumbach, p. 71. 



German Land Hunger 231 

bankers, 52 agriculturists, and 252 artists, writers, 
and publishers. These two memorials' may 
surely be taken as representing a very large and 
very important body of opinion. 

In the second and very much smaller portion 
of his book,^ Grumbach gives us either in full or 
in extracts a collection of anti-annexation utter- 
ances. He separates miscellaneous protests ^'aus 
dem Burger turn'' from the Social Democratic 
protests. The Social Democratic material con- 
sists of petitions and resolutions, manifestoes and 
circulars, speeches and articles published in jour- 
nals. The attitude of the independent socialists — 
we have already seen how little significance is to 
be attached to the formal declarations of the 
majority fraction — commands appreciation and 
admiration. This little group, representing a mi- 
nority of the great Social Democratic party — how 
large a minority it is at present impossible to deter- 
mine — has consistently opposed not annexations 
only but also the war itself. It has persistently 
denied that the war was forced upon Germany 
or was at the outset a defensive war. 

From other than Social Democratic sources 
Grumbach has been able to collect little anti- 
annexation material. Over against 142 books, 

^ Printed in full, Grumbach, pp. 123-140. ' Ibid., pp. 375-459. 



232 Militarism and Statecraft 

pamphlets, and review articles advocating annexa- 
tions, he is able to cite only three review articles 
and three pamphlets voicing protests. One of the 
three pamphlets was written by Dr. Quidde, the 
president of the German Peace Society. From 
this society we have also a set of resolutions, a 
petition sent to the Imperial Diet, and a speech 
delivered by Dr. Fried, the editor of the pacifist 
Friedenswarte, an excellent journal now published 
in Zurich and excluded from circulation in Ger- 
many.' For the rest, Grumbach gives us ex- 
tracts from two leading articles published in the 
Berliner Tageblatt, and two memorials that were 
presented to the imperial chancellor and that 
emanated neither from socialists nor from pacifists. 

One of these is the so-called Delbriick-Dernburg 
petition. "^ As early as October, 1914, Professor 
Hans Delbruck published in the Preussische Jahr- 
biicher an eloquent warning against plans of con- 
quest. In the spring of 1915, during his visit to 
the United States, Dr. Dernburg publicly stated 
that Germany would not annex Belgium nor any 
other European territory — a statement that eli- 
cited energetic protests from home journals.^ 
In July, 19 1 5, Delbruck, Dernburg, and 139 other 
prominent Germans — professors, government 

» Grumbach, pp. 41 1-415. ^ Ibid., 409-41 1. 3 Ibid., 78, 81. 



German Land Hunger 233 

officials, manufacturers, financiers, editors, and a 
few retired military and naval officers — sent to 
the imperial chancellor a brief and very carefully 
worded protest against the annexation propaganda. 
The petitioners declare that Germany did not 
enter the war to make conquests; they reject in 
principle the incorporation in the German Empire 
of ''peoples politically independent and accus- 
tomed to independence " ; but they assert also that 
the occupied regions that Germany will vacate 
when peace is concluded must not be converted 
into a bulwark for Germany's enemies. (This, of 
course, refers mainly to Belgium.) They are 
not in favour of averting this peril by arrange- 
ments which must lead ultimately to annexation, 
but they are confident that victory will bring to 
the German nation rewards commensurate with 
its heroic deeds and sacrifices. 

The German nation [they say] can conclude no 
peace but one that provides secure bases for its 
strategic needs, for its political and economic 
interests, and for the unhampered exercise of its 
strength and its spirit of enterprise at home and 
on the free sea. 

It is to be noted that this petition does not 
exclude but, in the phrase "secure bases," specifi- 
cally reserves guaranties and securities. It will 



234 Militarism and Statecraft • 

be noted also that the German government is to 
have a free hand in disposing of the destinies of 
peoples who are not accustomed to self-govern- 
ment. In the autumn of the same year (191 5) 
Professor Delbruck published in the Preussische 
Jahrbilcher^ articles advocating the annexation of 
the Russian Baltic provinces and the establish- 
ment of a kingdom of Poland in personal union 
with the kingdom of Saxony. As an alterna- 
tive, he suggested giving Poland to Austria. In 
the same year another of the petitioners, the well- 
known Pan-Germanist Rohrbach, published a 
pamphlet in which he advocated the annexation 
of the Belgian Congo and of the Portuguese colony 
of Angola. "^ 

This petition was obviously framed for foreign 
consumption. It was intended to counteract the 
bad impression created abroad, especially in neu- 
tral countries, by the annexation propaganda. 
It may have been intended also to discourage 
extravagant German hopes and to protect the 
imperial government against the reaction which 
would follow disillusion. Grumbach stretches a 
point in putting this petition among the anti- 
annexation documents. 

'September, 1915, p. 560; October, 1915, p. 168. 
^ Unsere koloniale Zukunft, pp. 14-17. 



German Land Hunger 235 

Qtdte another spirit animates the petition pre- 
sented to the chancellor early in June, 191 5, on 
behalf of the "New Fatherland Alliance" {Bund 
Neues Vaterland) .^ The petitioners express their 
opposition not only to conquests but also to rectifi- 
cations of frontiers. Such changes, they argue, 
would not secure Germany against future attacks ; 
in many instances the proposed new frontiers 
would be more vulnerable than the old. In the 
present war Germany's enemies have not been 
able to attack her coasts; in a future war the 
German coast line, if extended, as the annexation- 
ists demanded, to Boulogne, would be far less 
easily defensible. "* In the great plains of the East, 
new frontiers would obviously afford no greater 
security. And at what point could the advance 
be arrested? If the defence of East Prussia and 
Silesia demands "protective belts," would not 
these, when settled by Germans, require pro- 
tection by new belts? "Is this protective- 
belt system to be extended in infinitum, until 
Germany reaches the Arctic and Pacific Oceans? " ^ 

Positive arguments against annexations are 
found in the internal perils Germany would en- 
counter in the attempt to rule additional millions 

^Printed in full, Grumbach, pp. 375-408. 'Ibid., pp. 395-398. 
^Ibid., pp. 387-388. 



236 Militarism and Statecraft • 

of alien subjects, and in the external peril she 
would inevitably evoke by arousing hatred and 
thirst for revenge in the countries despoiled and 
by offending the conscience of the civilized world. 

Our experiences tell us . . . that the violation 
of Belgian neutrality has almost everywhere made 
a disastrous and altogether lamentable impression 
on the feelings of neutrals; that this impression, 
despite the lapse of ten months, is in nowise effaced; 
that on the contrary it has in many cases been 
regrettably intensified. . . . 

Members of our Alliance know, from personal 
impressions, how strong has been the effect of the 
violation of Belgian neutrality upon the great 
majority of Americans, even upon those who were 
friendly to Germany. ... It has been particu- 
larly difficult to make our appeal to a " state of 
necessity" intelligible to Americans. . . . 

The annexation of Belgium would be viewed in 
all countries as the forcible subjugation of a mal- 
treated free nation, wholly clear of responsibility 
for her sad fate. With the strong prejudice al- 
ready existing against us among many peoples, 
it would have a fearful and long enduring effect. . . . 

Should we insist upon maintaining demands for 
annexation which would make any conclusion of 
peace Impossible within any calculable period, we 
should do our utmost to drive the neutrals into the 
camp of our enemies ; we should turn against us first 
their sympathies and then perhaps their armies. ^ 

» Grumbach, pp. 400-403. 



German Land Hunger 237 

In an earlier passage, in which the petitioners 
dealt with the annexation propaganda in its full- 
est scope, they wrote: *'A ruthless victor would 
conjure up against himself the hostility of the 
whole world and would necessarily succumb to 
the alliance of all the powers."^ 

From the drunken Germany of the moment the 
petitioners appeal to the sober statecraft of an 
earlier generation. With a bitter irony that re- 
veals a deep patriotic resentment they write : 

What a pitiable palterer was Bismarck, who in 
1866 let Austria escape without cession of territory, 
and who in 1871 concluded a premature peace, 
without fully exploiting the favourable military 
situation and taking from the French Verdun and 
Belfort." 

This protest is one of the ablest and one of the 
most important documents that this war has 
evoked. The Alliance from which it proceeded 
numbered among its members, Grumbach tells 
us, men from many and very different circles — 
politicians, savants, manufacturers, financiers, and 
retired diplomatists. It was organized in Novem- 
ber, 1914, by Baron von Tepper-Laski, "one of 
the best known of Prussian sportsmen." Its 
declared purpose was to further 

' Ibid., p. 377. ' Ibid., p. 384. 



238 Militarism and Statecraft 

all movements adapted to imbue the policy and 
diplomac}^ of the states of Europe with the thought 
of peaceful competition and of combination reach- 
ing over state lines {iiberstaatlicher Zusammen- 
schluss), in order to secure political and economic 
adjustments among civilized nations. This can 
be achieved only by an abandonment of the system 
hitherto prevailing, which entrusts to a few per- 
sons decisions which bring welfare or woe to hun- 
dreds of millions of human beings.' 

This is neither socialism nor radical pacifism; 
it is a sane and conservative internationalism, 
based on national self-government. The pro- 
gramme of the Alliance closely resembles that set 
forth' by President Wilson: it hopes to make the 
world safer through democracy. 

It is a cheering thing that such an association 
could be formed in Prussia, after the outbreak of 
the war, and among persons of such standing. 
It is an inspiring thing that its members should 
have dared not only to defy the dominant military 
influences but also to antagonize the opinions 
prevailing in their own social circles. This peti- 
tion proves, more conclusively even than socialist 
or pacifist reactions, that there is today, even in 
Prussia, a sane and, let us hope, a saving 
remnant. 

' Grumbach, p. 409. 



German Land Hunger 239 



III 



To list the demands of individual German an- 
nexationists would be wearisome. To select the 
most extravagant demands would be interesting 
but unfair. It may be worth while, however, to 
indicate how and to what extent the outbreak and 
progress of the war modified the ante helium aspira- 
tions voiced or hinted by the Pan-Germanists, 
and then to examine the concrete demands that 
may be regarded as representative, that seem 
to have embodied the hopes and expectations of 
the great majority of the German people. 

Before the war, expansion over sea was, for 
obvious reasons, more generally and far more 
frankly discussed than expansion in Europe. 
After the outbreak of the war, for equally obvious 
reasons, over-sea expansion fell into the back- 
ground. During the period covered by Grum- 
bach's compilation, the Germans expected, indeed, 
to recover their colonies in Asia, in Africa, and in 
the islands of the Pacific; they even hoped to 
expand some of these colonies and to gain others 
of greater value. Despite the lessons of history, 
most Germans apparently believed that over-sea 
colonies could be retained and even acquired 
without control of the sea. Some indeed — among 



240 Militarism and Statecraft 

them Haeckel — assumed that Germany could 
acquire such control, and that the war would end 
in the occupation of London.' Many more, 
however, believed that the British Empire would 
be hopelessly crippled, if not destroyed, by a 
Teutonic-Turkish conquest of Egypt.'' Others 
assumed that the destinies of the world would be 
determined on the battlefields of Europe. During 
the first two years of the war, accordingly, much 
was still written and said about German expansion 
in Africa and even in China. 

Regarding Latin-America there was a silence 
so sudden as to be audible. Grumbach's compila- 
tion contains but two allusions to this part of the 
world. Both the writers cited insist that there 
can be no question of political conquests in America. 
One of them, Herr Alfred Hettner, emits a growl 
concerning the Monroe Doctrine, which he appears 
to regard as an obstacle to German "economic 
and cultural activity. "^ The other. Dr. Karl 
Mehrmann, "in order to remove from the start 
any question as to the credibility of our assur- 
ances," admits that "at times in our country 
nationalistic covetousness extended {hinuberziin- 
gelte) to South America." At present, however, 

» Grumbach, pp. 240, 255, 296, 366. 

» Ibid., pp. 138, 160, 225-229. 3 Ibid., p. 300. 



German Land Hunger 241 

"the number of our enemies is great enough, and 
will remain great enough even after the war, to 
induce us to avoid everything that would unneces- 
sarily stir up new enemies against us."^ 

About Middle Europe, the Balkans and south- 
western Asia, on the other hand, much more was 
written and said after August i, 19 14, than before 
that date. These regions were already for the 
most part in the possession of the Central Empires 
or of their allies. To secure the territorial basis 
for a coherent world empire, all that was needed 
was complete control of the Balkan peninsula 
and an open road to Bagdad — and to British 
India. After the war, possibly during the war, 
the allied Middle European states were to be 
bound firmly together by military conventions 
and by customs treaties. Eventually they would 
form a great federal empire, into which would be 
drawn all the smaller neighbouring states, from 
the North Cape to the Bosphorus. The European 
boundaries of this empire would be determined 
primarily, of course, by the extent to which the 
Teutonic victories were utilized. With the out- 
break of the war, the question of German annexa- 
tions in Europe became a topic of active discussion. 
In the first five months of the war, nine books and 

' Ibid., pp. 338-339. 
16 



242 Militarism and Statecraft * 

pamphlets were devoted primarily to this ques- 
tion, three only to expansion over sea. In the 
publications that advocated expansion every- 
where, the necessity of making European annexa- 
tions was correspondingly emphasized. 

In considering the scope and the character of 
the annexations demanded in Europe, I shall dis- 
regard the aspirations of single writers, however 
prominent and influential, and shall consider 
only the two important and representative memo- 
rials described above, that of the six industrial 
associations and that of the professors. 

Neither of these memorials speaks of ' ' annexing" 
Belgium, but both demand a degree of German 
control that would amount to annexation. The 
six associations say: 

As regards military and customs policy, and also 
as regards the monetary, banking, and postal 
systems, Belgium must be subjected to German 
imperial legislation. Railroads and canals are to 
be made portions of our transportation system. ^ 

The professors say: 

We must keep Belgium . . . firmly in our hands 
as regards political and military matters and as 
regards economic interests. On no point is the 
German nation more united in its opinion; to it 

^ Grumbach, p. 125. 



German Land Hunger 243 

the retention of Belgiiim is an indubitable matter 
of honour.^ 

As regards France, the six associations declare : 

The possession of the coast beyond the Belgian 
frontier, perhaps to the Somme, and therewith an 
outlet to the Atlantic Ocean, must be regarded as 
vital to our future importance on the sea. The 
hinterland that is to be acquired with this coast 
strip must be sufficient to secure complete strategic 
control and economic exploitation of the ports that 
we acquire on the Channel. Apart from the neces- 
sary acquisition of the ore fields of Briey, any 
further annexation of French territory is to be 
made exclusively on considerations of military 
strategy. It may be asstmied as self-evident, 
after the experiences of this war, that we . . . 
cannot leave in the hands of the enemy the forti- 
fied positions which threaten us, particularly 
Verdun and Belfort, nor the western slope of the 
Vosges that lies between them. The acquisition 
of the line of the Meuse and the French coast on 
the Channel involves, in addition to the above 
mentioned ore fields of Briey, also the possession 
of the coal fields in the Departments of the North 
and of Pas-de-Calais.* 

The professors formulate similar demands: 

We must ruthlessly weaken France politically 
and economically, for the sake of our own exist- 
ence, and we must improve against her our strate- 

i' Ibid., p. 134. ^ Ibid., pp. 125-126. 



244 Militarism and Statecraft 

gical position. For this purpose, according to our 
conviction, a thorough improvement of our whole 
west front from Belfort to the coast is necessary. 
We must conquer as great a part as possible of the 
North-French Channel coast, in order to obtain 
greater strategical security against England and a 
better outlet to the ocean. ^ 

As regards Russia the six associations explain: 

The need for strengthening also the sound agri- 
cultural basis of our national economy . . . de- 
mands a considerable extension of the imperial 
and Prussian frontiers toward the East, by annex- 
ing parts at least of the Baltic provinces and the 
districts lying south of the same, taking into con- 
sideration at the same time the object of making 
our East-German frontier defensible from a military 
point of view.^ 

The professors are less definite, but more elo- 
quent. They say: 

On our eastern frontier the population of the 
Russian Empire is increasing at a monstrous rate 
— at a rate of two and one-half to three mil- 
lions a year. Within a generation the popula- 
tion will amount to 250,000,000. Against this 
overwhelming preponderance on our eastern flank 
. . . Germany can assert herself only if she sets 
up a strong barrier . . . and if on the other hand 
the healthy growth of our own population is fur- 
thered by all possible means. Such a barrier and 

» Grumbach, p. 134. 'Ibid., pp. 126-127. 



German Land Hunger 245 

also a basis for safeguarding the growth of our own 
population are to be found in the territory that 
Russia must cede to us. This must be agricultural 
land, adapted to settlement. Land, that gives us 
a healthy peasantry, this fresh fountain of all 
national and political power. Land, that can take 
over a part of our increase of population and 
offer to returning Germans, who desire to turn 
their backs upon the hostile foreign world, a new 
home in the old home. Land, that increases Ger- 
many's economic independence ... by enabling 
her to nourish herself, that provides the needed 
counterpoise against the advancing industrializa- 
tion and urbanization of our people, that preserves 
the equipoise of our economic forces . . . and 
prevents the perilous lapse into English one-sided- 
ness. Land, that arrests a declining birth rate, 
checks emigration and alleviates the dearth of 
housing facilities {Wohnungsnot). Land, where 
the process of resettlement and Germanization 
will open new careers also to the intellectual pro- 
letariat. Such land, required for our physical, 
moral, and spiritual health, is to be found first of 
all in the East. ' 

The petition of the New Fatherland Alliance 
was elicited by and is a reply to the memorial of 
the six associations. The Alliance translates the 
territorial demands of the associations, ''attempt- 
ing," it says, "to interpret them as modestly as 
possible," into approximate statements of areas 

^ Ihid., p. 135. 



246 Militarism and Statecraft 

and populations to be annexed.' The figures 
may be tabulated as follows : 

COUNTRIES SQUARE KILOMETRES POPULATION 

Belgium 30,000 7,500,000 

France 20,000 3,500,000 

Russia 80,000 5,000,000 



Totals 130,000 16,000,000 

Both the six associations and the professors are 
convinced that it would be dangerous to the Ger- 
man Empire to admit the inhabitants of its annexed 
districts to full political equality with its German 
population. The government and administration 
of Belgium, the associations say, "must be so 
conducted that the inhabitants shall obtain no 
influence upon the political destinies of the Ger- 
man Empire." As regards the populations to be 
taken over from France and from Russia, the same 
statement is made. In the case of the French 
citizens who are to fall under German rule, this 
recommendation is based on "our experiences in 
Alsace-Lorraine." The professors are of the same 
opinion: "To the part of the French population 
that we take over" and **to the inhabitants of 
Belgium, no political influence in the Empire is 

^ Gmmbach, pp. 379, 380. 



German Land Hunger 247 

to be conceded." As regards the Slavs, no such 
statement is made by the professors, because, as 
we shall presently see, very few Slavs were to be 
"taken over." The Slavs were to be taken 
away. 

Rather than attempt myself to characterize 
these proposals, let me again cite the Alliance: 

How great a task would be imposed upon Ger- 
many, even in times of peace, if . . . more than 
16,000,000 inhabitants, almost all animated by the 
bitterest hostility against everything German, 
were to be loaded upon the Empire, with its popula- 
tion of 67,000,000; what perils would be involved 
in times of peace, to say nothing of times of war— 
these questions have not wholly escaped the atten- 
tion of the authors of the Memorial. This explains 
the fact that they advance a further demand. . . . 
In the annexed countries government and adminis- 
tration are to be so conducted that "the inhabit- 
ants shall obtain no influence upon the destinies 
of the German Empire." 

In other words, the population is to be ruled by 
the German Empire without being able to exercise 
any political rights in the German Empire. . . . 
This system is to be imposed, not only in the East, 
upon Russian subjects, but also in the West, on 
Belgian and French citizens, accustomed to the 
fullest liberty and to democratic constitutions. 

... To the monstrous proposal of converting 
16,000,000 foreign and hostile hiunan beings into 
compulsory members of the German Empire there 



248 Militarism and Statecraft • 

is thus added a second monstrosity. No sane 
person will believe that any such forcible subjuga- 
tion could be permanent. Rather would it be 
fearfully avenged upon the German nation.^ 

The six associations and the professors concur 
in certain further recommendations. In Belgium, 
"the economic enterprises and possessions that 
are important for the domination of the country," 
in the districts to be taken from France, "the 
economic resources to be found in these districts, 
including medium and large land holdings," are to 
be taken from their former proprietors and "put 
into German possession." So the six associations. 
The professors use only slightly variant terms: 
they speak of "the enterprises and possessions 
that give economic power" and they urge that 
these be "transferred from hostile to German 
hands." Both memorials suggest that the expro- 
priated French citizens shall be indemnified and 
taken over by France, as part of the war indemnity 
to be paid by that country. Neither memorial 
explains how the expropriated Belgians are to be 
indemnified, or what is to become of them. As 
regards the districts to be ceded in the East, the 
six associations tersely indicate that "the war 
indemnity to be paid by Russia must consist 

^ Grumbach, pp. 380-381. 



German Land Hunger 249 

largely in the transfer of private titles to land." 
The professors are more explicit : 

Russia is over-rich in land, and the land of which 
she is to cede us political control we shall demand 
. . . freed for the most part from private titles. 
. . . The Russian population is not so firmly 
rooted in the soil as is that of western and central 
Europe. Russia itself has repeatedly transplanted 
large parts of its population to remote districts. ' 

Here again the Alliance provides us with an 
appropriate comment: 

In carrying out the annexations, the Memorial 
"demands not only measures in the field of public 
law but also far-reaching attacks upon the right of 
private property. All possessions that carry with 
them strong economic and social influence . . . 
are to pass into German hands. 

This would be a revolution in the economic situa- 
tion of individuals in the annexed countries such as no 
modern annexation has carried with it. It recalls — 
and the comparison is not on the whole favourable to 
the modern plan — the times of the great migrations 
of the nations. In those times the Roman citizen 
holding land in a Roman province conquered by the 
Teutons was obliged to cede, in one form or another, 
a part of his possessions to a Teuton conqueror. 

Thus one monstrosity begets another. ^ 

An interesting illustration of the tricks that 
language can play with conscience is the way in 

^ Ibid., p. 136. ' Ibid., pp. 381-382. 



250 Militarism and Statecraft • 

which the catchword of ''strategic securities,'* 
which implies only defence against aggression, 
slides over, first into "political securities," which 
are to be obtained by transforming Germany's 
free neighbours into subjects of Germany without 
political rights, and then into "economic securities, 
which are to be obtained by ejecting millions of 
foreign peasants, in order that Germany may not 
need to buy grain or meat from aliens, and by 
ejecting the owners of foreign mines and factories, 
in order that the Germans may gain something 
approaching a continental monopoly of important 
manufactures. On this last point the six asso- 
ciations furnish the chancellor with valuable 
detailed suggestions. Their memorial includes a 
careful survey of Naboth's mineral resources.' 

The demands above summarized, especially 
the demand for wholesale expropriations, may be 
regarded by the advocates of the economic inter- 
pretation of history in general, and of this war in 
particular, as evidence of the truth of their theories. 
Those who are disposed to lay greater stress upon 
the psychological interpretation of history, and 
particularly of war, may however insist that the 
economic motives discernible in the German an- 
nexation propaganda are indistinguishable from 

^ Grumbach, pp. 1 28-131. 



German Land Hunger 251 

those which, in private life, animate the burglar, 
and that the problem that really deserves scien- 
tific examination is the process of feeling and of 
thought through which high-minded men come 
to regard international burglary as a national 
duty. 

The six associations limit themselves to the prob- 
lems of German aggrandizement and enrichment. 
The professors are mindful also of the interests of 
their allies, or at least of Germany's interests in 
the proper development of Middle Europe. 

We admit that the blockade by which England 
has transformed Germany during the period of the 
war into a closed commercial state has taught us 
something. It has taught us above all that . . . 
we must make ourselves as independent as possible 
in all political, military, and economic matters, on 
the basis of an expanded and better secured home 
territory in Europe. Similarly we must organize 
upon the continent, in immediate connection with 
our land frontiers . . . the broadest possible con- 
tinental economic domain. . . . For this purpose 
it is important permanently to secure Austria- 
Hungary, the Balkans, Turkey, and Asia Minor 
to the Persian Gulf against Russian and English 
ambitions. ^ 

We have already seen what ' * security ' ' against 
foreign ambitions means. What Austria needs for 
» Ibid., p. 137. 



252 Militarism and Statecraft 

her security in the way of ''protective belts" is 
set forth by many German writers. Dr. Albert 
Ritter, for example, indicates what is necessary 
for the security of Triest : 

. . . The northern part of Venetia, the districts 
of Friuli and Tr aviso, up to a line running from 
the south end of Lake Garda to the mouth of the 
Piave, must be taken as a glacis at the foot of the 
Alps in order to ward off from Austria's Adriatic 
coast all future menace. ^ 



IV 



In a democratic country, especially if its gov- 
ernment is of the parliamentary type, the ex- 
istence of a public sentiment so general and 
so definitely formulated as annexation sentiment 
appears to be in Germany would make inquiry 
as to the attitude of the government so un- 
important as to seem superfluous. In Germany 
also we may draw from utterances in the press 
conclusions regarding governmental policy, but 
for very different reasons. In Germany the re- 
lation between governmental opinion and public 
sentiment is almost the reverse of that obtaining 
in England and in France. Not only is the gov- 

^ Der organische Aufbau Europas (191 6), pp. 27-28. Dr. 
Ritter's oen-name is Konrad von Winterstetten. 



German Land Hunger 253 

ernment independent of parliamentary majori- 
ties, but it is also, to a very considerable extent, 
independent of public sentiment. It needs, as 
all governments need, the support of the people; 
but through its control of the press, which is ex- 
tensive in peace and ten-fold greater in war, it 
controls the expression and thus largely shapes 
the substance of national feehng and thought. 
Under such conditions the attitude of the press 
is conclusive evidence of the attitude of the 
government. Grumbach gives us direct evidence. 
He reprints notices sent April 24 and 25, 191 5, 
by General Baron von Gayl, in command of the 
seventh army corps, to two Social Democratic 
journals. One of these had been guilty of oppos- 
ing the annexation of Belgium, which, the general 
says, "wide circles of the nation regard as neces- 
sary." The other journal had characterized as 
"phantasies" utterances of Deputy Paasche re- 
garding the possible acquisition of colonial and 
European territories, and had praised an essay 
of Professor Brentano, which, the general says, 
"in a discussion of the aims of peace, contains 
serious breaches of the party truce (Burgfriede).'* 
Both journals are consequently notified, in iden- 
tical language: "Since your attitude gives me 
no assurance for the future against offences of 



254 Militarism and Statecraft 

the kind censured, I impose upon your journal 
the requirement of approval before publication.' 

Under such conditions it is not surprising that 
few protests against annexations appeared in 
Social Democratic journals. Even the attitude 
of the "bourgeois" journals, which, with only- 
three or four exceptions,^ were openly annexa- 
tionist, seems less conclusively indicative of public 
sentiment than of governmental policy. 

The Burgfriede, which General von Gayl invgked, 
was supposed to bar party controversies during the 
war. Annexation, accordingly, was to him a party 
question. Discussion of the aims of the war 
{Kriegsziele) seems to have been specifically pro- 
hibited; but it does not appear that any German 
journal came into collision with the authorities by 
advocating territorial guaranties and securities. 

In the governmental attitude towards memo- 
rials, petitions and resolutions of groups, associa- 
tions and political parties, similar distinctions are 
noticeable. German newspapers, it is true, were 
not permitted to print the memorial of the six 
economic associations nor that of the professors. 
These were not regarded as suitable articles of 
export. Since, however, they were adapted to 
strengthen the German "will to victory," they 

» Grumbach, p. 23. » Ihid.^ preface, p. i. 



German Land Hunger 255 

enjoyed unimpeded circulation throughout Ger- 
many as "confidential printed manuscripts." 
On the other hand, all printed copies of the protest 
of the New Fatherland Alliance were seized by 
the police. The Alliance itself was placed under 
such surveillance and exposed to such annoyances 
that it abandoned the attempt to hold meetings. ' 
The petition and the resolutions of the German 
Peace Society were not allowed to appear in print ; 
they were sent to members only in typewritten 
form. A pamphlet by its president, printed as 
manuscript, was excluded from the mails. All 
Social Democratic protests, except those that 
constituted part of the proceedings of the Imperial 
Diet or of state legislatures, were excluded from 
the press, and all copies discovered were seized 
by the police. Anti-annexation manifestoes and 
pamphlets, printed in Switzerland, were held up 
on the frontier. They were subjected, that is, to 
the same treatment as other anti-government 
literature, such as T accuse. 

The formal utterances of the German authorities, 
both in the Empire and in the single states, were 
guarded. At the outbreak of hostiHties the em- 



* Ihid., p. 409. The " Fatherland" part of its name appears 
to have been appropriated by a new political party of militarist 
and annexationist tendencies. 



256 Militarism and Statecraft • 

peror declared that Germany was not waging a 
war of conquest. This statement was periodi- 
cally repeated by the civil authorities. On the 
other hand, both the emperor and his chancellor 
spoke repeatedly of "guaranties and securities." 
This phrase was launched by Bethmann-Hollweg 
in the Imperial Diet, May 28, 19 15. It was 
received in the Diet and by the press as a declara- 
tion in favour of annexations. Against this inter- 
pretation the chancellor interposed no protest. 
On July 31, 191 5, in an address to the German 
people, the emperor modified the phrase. The 
chancellor spoke of guaranties against any future 
military attack (Waffengang). The emperor de- 
manded **the necessary military, political, and 
economic securities" for ''the unimpeded develop- 
ment of our creative powers at home and on 
the free sea." In subsequent utterances the 
chancellor rejected the re-establishment of "old 
past conditions"; asserted that the guaranties 
to be demanded by Germany would increase with 
the duration of the war, that Germany's future 
position must be "unassailable," that her enemies 
were no longer to hold "sally-ports" in the East 
or in the West; and stated that Germany could 
not permit Belgium to be used by England or by 
France as a military base (Aufmarschgebiet) , that 



German Land Hunger 257 

Germany must have ''political, military, and 
economic security" against the reconstruction of 
Belgium as an "Anglo-French vassal state" or 
as a " military and economic bulwark against 
Germany," and that Germany could not "again 
expose the long-oppressed Flemish nationality to 
Gallicization (Verwelschung) .'^ ^ The allusions to 
Belgium were taken to signify that this country 
was to be so divided as to separate the Walloon 
from the Flemish stock, and that both parts, 
whether formally annexed or not, were to be kept 
under German control. Colonial Secretary Solf 
stated in 19 15 that Germany's colonial possessions 
must be maintained and increased "without pre- 
judice to the possible acquisition of territory in 
Europe." The Prussian minister of the interior, 
replying in 191 6 to a Social Democratic declara- 
tion against annexations, said: 

This declaration is not in harmony with the true 
spirit of the people in this heroic time; least of all 
will it be intelligible to the men who are fighting 
for us. . . . The German Empire must build 
with blood and iron the road to the attainment of 
its political destiny in the world. ^ 

Neither individual covetousness nor national 
lust for conquest is peculiar to the Germans. 
» Grumbach, pp. 5-8. * Ibid., p. 11. 



258 Militarism and Statecraft 

Even in this war writers and speakers in the coun- 
tries allied against Germany have advocated 
annexations, some of which can hardly be viewed 
as restitutions. Grumbach, however, is quite 
justified in asserting that 

in no other country are annexations advocated in 
so immoderate a manner and so openly as in Ger- 
many, by the most influential political leaders, 
by orreat political parties, and by the best known 
university professors. 

He might have added that in no other country 
has an amiexation propaganda been encouraged 
by governmental authorities. He is equally justi- 
fied in saying: 

And even if plans of annexation existed on a simi- 
lar scale in other countries, which I deny, in esti- 
mating their danger we could not pass over the 
question, how far the military situation gives the 
single countries an}^ practical possibility of making 
such annexations. . . . The reason why the peril 
of annexations demanded in Germany is for the 
moment so great, is that the German arm^^ has 
occupied Belgium, North France, and the Baltic 
pro\dnces, and (in co-operation with the Austrians) 
Poland, Serbia, and Montenegro.* 

And since his book w^as published, the Teutonic 
armies have occupied the greater part of Rumania 
and have overrun Venetia. 

» Grumbach, p. iii. 



German Land Hunger 259 



The tendencies above examined and analysed 
were not the sole causes of the World War. As 
we have already seen, the influence that directly 
precipitated the war was that of the military 
authorities. Some of these desired war for its 
own sake. Those who had no such desire, or 
were unwilling to acknowledge to themselves 
that they were actuated by any such desire, felt 
themselves bound to hasten the war, because 
they beHeved it to be inevitable, because they 
thought, and not without reason, that the 
political situation in Russia, in France, and in 
Great Britain was exceptionally favourable to 
their designs, and because, in their opinion, 
the military superiority of Germany was greater 
at the moment than it would be later. They 
feared not only that their enemies would be 
better prepared, but also that it would be 
impossible to induce the German people to 
maintain an armament which, after forty- 
three years of peace, might well seem in excess 
of any real needs. Maximilian Harden, who 
usually reflects with accuracy the opinions 
that are tending to become dominant, wrote in 
1913: 



26o Militarism and Statecraft 

The nation is unanimous in its complaints. 
Bismarck would never have made the mistake of 
asking for his country a military equipment suffi- 
ciently powerful to fight England, France, and the 
Slav masses, only to keep it unemployed during 
long years of peace. ^ 

Later in the same jyear the smouldering dis- 
content of the nation, fanned into flame by the 
arrogance displayed by the German military 
authorities in the Zabern affair, led to an inter- 
pellation in the Reichstag and to the adoption of 
a vote of censure by the remarkable majority of 
293 ayes to 54 nays. When the Reichstag ad- 
journed. May 20, 1 9 14, the Social Democrats 
remained seated while the other deputies rose and 
cheered the emperor; and, when their attitude 
was reproved by the president, some of them 
shouted, "That is our affair," and tried to drown 
the cheers with hoots and hisses. ^ In the opinion 
of Ambassador Gerard, who was in Germany at 
the time and through the first years of the war, 
this episode did much to win the emperor's con- 
sent to the war. 3 It might well have disquieted 
a ruler who beheved that "the only pillar on 
which the realm rested was the army."'' 

^ Cited in Juge's par eux-mimes (Paris, 1916), p. 42. 

' Gerard, My Four Years in Germany, chapter iv. 

3 Ibid., p. 91. 4 Speech of October 18, 1894. 



German Land Hung-er 261 



t> 



There were also class interests in play. Be- 
sides the manufacturing interests, on which the 
Socialists, with their hostility to the capitalist 
system, lay exaggerated emphasis, there was the 
class interest of the landed aristocracy, and espe- 
cially of the Prussian Junkers. These resented 
the rapid enrichment of the mercantile class, and 
saw in its growing wealth and influence a menace 
to the power and prestige of their own order. 
They were disposed to welcome a war in which 
the German military officers, who are drawn al- 
most exclusively from the landed gentry, could 
exhibit their efficiency and reaffirm their impor- 
tance. The gain would be theirs; the costs, if 
not defrayed by indemnities, would fall on their 
bourgeois rivals. The selfishness of their attitude 
and the meanness of their jealousy were masked 
even to themselves under a patriotic solicitude 
for the welfare of the nation, menaced by the 
corrupting and enervating influences of peace, 
prosperity, and luxury. 

Dynastic and class interests, however, might 
not have been sufficiently strong or their repre- 
sentatives sufficiently unscrupulous to bring on 
the war. They certainly could not have carried 
the nation into the war with anything approach- 
ing the enthusiasm which the German people 



262 Militarism and Statecraft • 

displayed in August, 1914. Such enthusiasm can 
be awakened only by an appeal to emotions 
which all can share. The emotions to which 
appeal was made were fear and cupidity. "The 
Slav peril," persistently emphasized for years as 
the chief reason for increasing German armaments, 
had become, to the German artisans and peasants, 
a very real and present danger. Their fear pre- 
disposed them to accept the official legend of a 
Russian attack. Of even wider appeal, however, 
were the ambitions whose growth I have out- 
lined; and if among the many influences that 
worked together for war any one can be regarded 
as the chief factor, it was probably the dream of 
world empire. National ambition, once aroused, 
appeals alike to sovereign and to subject, to men 
of every class and of every vocation. In the 
middle and upper classes it made a far stronger 
appeal than the Slav peril, which these classes 
were too intelligent to overestimate. 

Except in its intensity and its extent, its ap- 
parent prevalence among all classes of the people, 
there is nothing really novel, nothing unprece- 
dented, in the German land hunger. There is 
nothing new even in the theory of a mission. 
Again and again, in the history of the world, a 
nation that has been too successful in war, and 



German Land Hunger 263 

tcK) easily successful, has developed lust for power 
and has sought to cover the nakedness of its ambi- 
tion with the drapery of such a theory, with the 
assumption that its rule will benefit its conquered 
enemies. It was the mission of the Greeks to 
carry into Asia a finer civilization, as it was the 
mission of the France of Louis XIV to render a 
like service to central Europe. It was the mis- 
sion of Rome to confer upon all peoples the boon 
of just and equal laws. The Empire of the Haps- 
burgs was charged with the duty of defending 
and diffusing orthodox religion. The armies of 
the first French Republic crossed the Rhine in 
order to free their neighbours from princely 
tyranny; those of the first Napoleon overran 
Europe to abolish feudaHsm and to establish legal 
equality; those of the third Napoleon went into 
Italy to complete this work and to establish the 
principle of nationality. Even in the United 
States, although it has never been a military 
power, the consciousness of latent military energy 
and of potential superiority in war has bred, at 
least in some minds, national ambition; and with 
ambition has appeared, from time to time, the 
perilous notion of a mission. Some of our coun- 
trymen have thought it our mission to secure 
the reign of law throughout Latin America — a 



264 Militarism and Statecraft • 

theory closely akin to that of Roman imperialism. 
Some are talking today as if it were our mission 
and that of our allies to compel our enemies to 
abandon monarchic government, as if we had 
entered and were waging this war, not to make the 
world safe for democracy, but to make it unsafe 
for monarchy — a theory indistinguishable from 
that which led revolutionary France, in passing 
from the defensive to the offensive, to establish 
on its frontiers a fringe of little republics — repub- 
lics that afterwards fell, with France itself, into 
the hands of a military autocrat. 

With us, however, these dangerous notions are 
sporadic, not general. In the existing world 
crisis we are glad that our allies stand, as we do, 
for popular self-government as well as for the reign 
of law. We feel that the establishment of demo- 
cratic government in Germany would facilitate 
the conclusion of a lasting peace, lessen the peril 
of future war, promote international co-operation 
and place international law on a firmer basis. 
We see that this war has already strengthened 
the forces of democracy in every nation; and we 
believe that the triumph of the cause we have 
espoused will discredit military monarchy in 
Germany as in every other nation ; but we did not 
enter nor are we waging this war in order to 



German Land Hunger 265 

force upon Germany or upon any other nation a 
change in its governmental system. 

National land hunger, national illusions of a 
world mission, militaristic sentiment — these may 
appear sporadically, they may even become domi- 
nant, for a time, in any nation. Whether they 
are characteristic of any nation is a question of 
degree and of duration. In the case of nations 
as in that of individuals, all the traits and ten- 
dencies that constitute character are human. 
Differences of character result from different com- 
binations of these universal traits or, in an older 
phrase, from the way in which ''the elements are 
mixed." We may go further and assert that the 
seemingly new spirit, good or bad, which an indi- 
vidual or a nation exhibits in a crisis is usually 
marked by the further development of traits that 
were already strongly developed and by the sup- 
pression of other traits that were always less 
developed. It is all a question of degree. Insan- 
ity itself, at least in many of its forms, exhibits 
no traits that are not found in sane people: it is 
marked by the development of some trait or traits 
beyond the degree of variation which is sufficiently 
common to be regarded as normal. Men may be 
unreasonably suspicious of their fellows or un- 
reasonably assured of their own importance aPxd 



266 Militarism and Statecraft • 

yet be within the line of sanity, but exaggeration 
of either trait may amount to mania. From this 
point of view, it seems permissible to say that a 
nation may be at least temporarily insane. The 
fact that so many Germans, apparently most 
Germans, believe without evidence that they 
were about to be attacked by their neighbours 
suggests that the nation was afflicted by the 
mania of persecution. Another indication of a 
disordered national mind is the reiterated state- 
ment, made before as well as after the outbreak 
of the war, that no other nation is able to under- 
stand Germany. Couple with this the fact that 
German writers assert that Germans fully under- 
stand the psychology of other nations, that they 
alone have this capacity, and that this superiority 
qualifies Germany to direct the destinies of the 
world; add to this the apparent acceptance of 
these claims by most of their countrymen, and it 
seems quite justifiable to say that German na- 
tional pride has developed into megalomania. 
The undoubted fact that some Germans are quite 
free from such hallucinations does not invalidate 
this judgment, for these sane Germans testify 
that the sentiments and opinions which they com- 
bat are general and dominant. 

Granting that the dangerous tendencies that 



German Land Hunger 267 

have been so startlingly exhibited in the modern 
German mind have been discernible in other 
nations that have grown too powerful through war, 
that, from the historical point of view, these ten- 
dencies seem almost inevitable, let us not forget 
that history shows us how these tendencies have 
been counteracted. In the destruction that fol- 
lows pride, in the nemesis that chastises v^pis^ 
Hebrew sages and Greek tragedians found a divine 
retributive justice. Treitschke himself, writing 
not as a political theorist but as a historian, notes 
how Germany was punished, in the Thirty Years' 
War, for the effort of its rulers to revive Roman 
imperialism and to extend their power over other 
peoples. "In the merciless justice of history," 
he tells us, ''those who lusted to rule the world 
were cast under the feet of the stranger." ' 

Nemesis, however, not only avenges, but also 
purifies. When victory has corrupted the soul 
of a people, defeat is salutary. In this sense we 
may accept Treitschke's famous saying: "The 
living God will take care that war shall always 
return as a terrible medicine for the human race."' 
In chastisement, religious sentiment has always 
found an exhibition, not of divine justice only, 
but also of divine benevolence. Today, as was 

» Deutsche Gcschichte, vol. i., p. 5- ' Politik, vol, i., p. 78. 



268 Militarism and Statecraft * 

the case a century ago, when the alHed Russians, 
Germans, and EngHsh overthrew Napoleon, the 
defeat of an empire may be the salvation of a 
people. 



VI 



Nothing short of a decisive defeat of Germany 
will secure the existence and development of the 
society of free nations. So often as this is im- 
perilled by the ambition of a single power, there 
must be a general war ; and every such war must 
be fought to a finish. 

Deeply moved as we are by the havoc and 
horror of the war now raging, — a war that al- 
ready has slain or crippled millions of men, has 
destroyed much of the fruit of centuries of peace- 
ful toil and is casting upon generations yet un- 
born burdens that threaten to be unbearable, — 
earnestly as we desire its speedy ending, we yet 
believe that a bad peace would be a greater evil 
than this worst of wars. If military force, or- 
ganized and perfected through half a century with 
unexampled persistency of purpose and concen- 
tration of effort, loosed suddenly and wantonly 
upon neighbours more peacefully minded and less 
fully prepared, directed, with deliberate disre- 



German Land Hunger 269 

gard of the customs and laws of modern warfare, 
not only against armed enemies but also against 
non-combatants and neutrals — if such force, so 
used, should emerge from this conflict with any 
appreciable advantage, with any gain of territory 
or influence, the peace that should register such 
a result would be a bad peace. It would rob the 
world of what is worth far more than goods or 
lives — faith in justice. Encouraging lawless ag- 
gression, it would sow the seeds of countless future 
wars. 

We believe that the moment at which aggres- 
sion, fully prepared, has secured its utmost prob- 
able gains in the occupation of neutral and enemy 
territory, the moment at which resources long 
husbanded for such aggression are beginning to 
fail, while the more peaceful nations, worsted by 
surprise, are now first attaining efficient organiza- 
tion of their larger populations and superior 
wealth, is not the moment at which a just and 
lasting peace can be secured. 

That moment, we believe, will come only when 
right is victorious. From Belgium to Armenia 
right is still on the scaffold ; from Brandenburg to 
the Bosphorus wrong is still on the throne. Peace 
patched up today could not but leave the moral 
issues of the war unsettled; and such a peace 



270 Militarism and Statecraft 

could be nothing more than an armistice. Far 
better than such a peace is further warfare, to the 
end that those who have given their Hves for 
national freedom and international justice shall 
not have died in vain. 



Militarism and Statecraft 



By Munroe Smith 



Crown Octavo. 61* net 

This volume contains, in revised and expanded form, the 
following studies, originally published in 1915-1917: 
Military Strategy versus Diplomacy, in Bismarck's time and 

afterwards ; 
Diplomacy versus Militsury Strategy ; How the Central Empires 

might have played the diplomatic game ; 
The German Theory of Warfare, and the results of its applica- 
tion; 
German Land Hunger, and other underlying causes of the war ; 

Also, in an Appendix: 
Correspondence with Theodore Roosevelt. 



European Comments 

" Having just finished a perusal of your article on ' Military 
Strategy versus Diplomacy,' I must give myself the pleasure of 
expressing warm admiration for its . . . clearness and 
cogency, as well as for its high standard of accuracy and its 
penetrating insight. ... I hope your article will be published 
separately, perhaps somewhat enlarged. It is a permanent con- 
tribution to history." — Letter from Viscount Bryce. 

" Vous avec la 6crit un article remarquable de tout point, 
aussi bien par la forte documentation que par la penetration de 
Vanalyse."— Letter from Prof. LEON DUGUIT, Faculty of Law, 
Bordeaux. 

" Professor Munroe Smith. . . leads us coolly and quickly 
through the labyrinth of controversies. Thanks to him, we again 
find the right path, although we have to retrace our steps some 
distance to do so." — Introduction to the Dutch translation of 
''Military Strategy versus Diplomacy,'' by W. DE VEER. 

" Professor Munroe Smith's article strikes me as perhaps the 
very best thing I have read on the origin of the present terrible 
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